Z E S Z Y T Y N A U K O W E UNIWERSYTETU RZESZOWSKIEGO
ZESZYT 51/2008
SERIA FILOLOGICZNA
STUDIA ANGLICA RESOVIENSIA 5
Ma gorzata MARTYNUSKA
REDEFINING THE AMERICAN DREAM: FROM JOHN DE
CRÈVECOEUR TO JIM JARMUSCH 1
The discovery of the new world brought about the idea of a dream, the
dream of freedom, wealth and other traditional American values and ideals such
as: justice, liberty, fairness, democracy, and equality. Foreign settlers wishing to
run away from hunger and poverty or religious persecution dreamed of a fresh
start in the New World. Some were motivated by the prospect of profitable
business, and many were adventurers. But all were ready to cross the Ocean in
order to make their dreams come true. Their decision to leave Europe was the
direct result of an idyllic vision of the unknown continent, based on the reports
of numerous travellers. The American Dream attracted tens of millions of people
from all nations to the American shores. They dreamed not only of material
affluence, but also of being able to grow to their fullest potential. 2
Iconic for the American Dream is the Statue of Liberty. In 1903 Emma
Lazarus’ poem “The New Colossus” (1883) was engraved on the base: Give me
your tired, your poor,/ your huddled masses yearning to breathe free./ The
wretched refuse of your teeming shore./ Send these, the homeless, tempest-tossed
to me,/ I lift my lamp beside the golden door! (David 1991:31).
It was a symbolic welcome for immigrants leaving their mother countries.
Just as Lazarus' poem gave new meaning to the statue, the statue took on and
transmitted a new ideal for the United States. Liberty did not only mean freedom
from the aristocracy of Britain that led the American colonists to the
Revolutionary War. Liberty also meant the freedom to travel to the United States
1
This article is a modified and extended version of The Disintegration of the American
Dream as seen in the films of Jim Jarmusch, published in G.A. Kleparski and A. Uberman (eds)
(2008).
2
For 17th and 18th century American literature concerning the American Dream see chapter
one of An Early American Reader ed. by Lemay (2000). Examples of travel literature, and
anecdotal accounts of exploration and discovery aimed at attracting people to America can be
found there.
179
and create a new life without religious and ethnic persecution. 3 As a direct result
of Larazus' poem, the Statue of Liberty gained a new name: She would now
become the Mother of Exiles, torch in hand to lead her new children to American
success and happiness.
St. John de Crèvecoeur emigrated to America in 1755 and, after four years
spent in New France, moved to the State of New York. As the author of Letters
from an American Farmer (1782), he is generally regarded as the first writer to
have explored the concept of the American Dream, defining America as a dream
land - the asylum of freedom, ... the craddle of future nations, and the refuge of
future Europeans (Crèvecoeur 1997:7). He saw the New World as a land of
plenty, an idyllic place comparable to paradise on earth. When new immigrants
arrived, they were simply unable to believe their eyes: It is to them a dream,
wrote Crèvecoeur (Lemay 2000:128).
Alexis de Tocqueville in his Democracy in America described New England as
a land given over to the fantasy of dreamers, where innovators should be allowed
to try out experiments in freedom (Tocqueville 1988:39). Tocqueville never used
the exact phrase (the American Dream), but he was at times very close to it with
expressions like the lure of success anticipated (Tocqueville 1988:483).
The American Dream as the literary expression of “America: the land of
opportunity” has been expressed by many authors ranging from Walt Whitman
and Thomas Jefferson to Benjamin Franklin. The great American poet, Walt
Whitman, author of Leaves of Grass, sometimes used the word “dream” in a
most compact way: I dream in my dream all the dreams of the other dreamers
(Whitman “The Sleepers” 1973:426). But he never mentioned the concept with
that particular wording – the American Dream. The closest he gets to such an
allusion is in “Passage to India” and his famous evocation of Christopher
Columbus: Ah Genoese thy dream! Thy dream !/ Centuries after thou art laid in
thy grave,/ The shore thou foundest verifies thy dream (Whitman “Passage to
India” 1973:414).
American is a nation of immigrants. These immigrants have journeyed to the
USA from various continents seeking economic opportunity, religious freedom
and social or political justice. Immigrants in particular have seen America as a
promised land, with the dream as an integral part of this vision. They had to face
reality at the Ellis Island - the chief entry station where the newcomers were
registered and sometimes denied entry. 4 During the 19th century, the
transcontinental railroads that opened the West to trade and settlement, the
3
The meaning of “freedom” and other values dominant in contemporary American culture
are discussed in Rediscovering America’s Values by Lappe (1989).
4
Problems connected with the growing number of newcomers forced the legislature of the
New York State designate the southern part of Manhattan – Castle Garden – as the centre for
receiving immigrants (Tindall and Shi 1996:440).
180
development of mass production through industrialization, and the discovery that
oil was abundant and could be used as the basic energy source for
manufacturing, were factors which greatly increased economic opportunities for
workers and businesspeople, as well as raising the American standard of living.
In the 19th century, “rags to riches” stories of business tycoons like Andrew
Carnegie and John D. Rockefeller contributed to the belief that talent and hard
work could lead to riches.
During the Jazz Age, the 1920’s, the American Dream was formed by the
upper class society. It was a dream of money, wealth, prosperity, the need to get
rich quick, and the happiness that should come as a result of a booming
economy. The American Dream was based purely upon materialistic things. It
was about taking advantage of the opportunities in life and managing to rise
through hard work and determination to a higher standard of living. The novel
The Great Gatsby, by F. Scott Fitzgerald, illustrates one man’s aspiration to
fulfill the American Dream, the limitations America set on his dreams, and the
disappointment of losing his dream. Jay Gatsby was a man who fought hard to
earn his place in the world. He dreamt of converting himself from a poor farm
boy into a wealthy man of high esteem. He became so focused on money that
any way of making it was thought to be acceptable, even if it was unethical, like
the bootlegging of liquor. The Great Gatsby shows the misconception of the
American Dream as being a life of prosperity, parties, happiness, and an alltogether idealistic world. He bought himself the finest automobiles, homes,
furniture, clothing, and jewellery but was unable to buy happiness. Just as The
Great Gatsby was full of dreamers, so was America during Prohibition. The
Great Gatsby portrays a corrupted version of the American Dream as
representing money, wealth, prosperity, and happiness.
The term the American Dream was historically popularized and brought into
general use by James Truslow Adams. In his book entitled The Epic of America,
which was written in 1931, the phrase appears for the first time in the Preface,
when Adams refers to the American Dream of a better, richer, and happier life
[for all], adding that that dream or hope has been present from the start (Adams
1931:viii). In the Epilogue Adams goes into more detail and broadens the scope
of the notion of the American Dream, explaining that it is
[…] that dream of a land in which life should be better and richer and fuller for
everyone, with opportunity for each according to ability or achievement. It is a difficult
dream for the European upper classes to interpret adequately, and too many of us
ourselves have grown weary and mistrustful of it. It is not a dream of motor cars and
high wages merely, but a dream of social order in which each man and each woman
shall be able to attain to the fullest stature of which they are innately capable, and be
recognized by others for what they are, regardless of the fortuitous circumstances of
birth or position (Adams 1931:404).
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Everyone‘s goal in life is to have the “perfect family” and a house with a
little white fence in the front yard. It is commonly accepted that it will always be
a part of the American Dream. However, a more important factor is to have the
freedom of choice, which is the ability to choose that which is best instead of
being limited to one particular thing. Not many countries offer to its citizens as
much freedom as the United States: the freedom to attend college, marry anyone
they want, the freedom of speech, 5 and so on. Although there have always been
and always will be variations on the American dream, the key component is
freedom (Billingsley 1995:7).
Martin Luther King Jr.’s famous speech “I Have a Dream” and Thomas
Jefferson’s “Declaration of Independence,” incorporate the American Dream in
the meaning of political and religious freedom, equal access to education and
equal opportunity in the workplace. King’s speech contains the words: It is a
dream deeply rooted in the American dream. ... I have a dream that ... one day
right there in Alabama little black boys and black girls will be able to join hands
with little white boys and white girls as sisters and brothers. 6 The political
freedom is expressed in the American “Declaration of Independence” with the
following words: full power to levy war, conclude peace, contract alliances,
establish commerce, and to do all other acts and things which independent states
may of right do. 7
The phrase – the American Dream - was first coined in 1931 when the
United States was in the grip of the Great Depression. One consequence of that
economic and social crisis was that America lost something essential that was
fundamentally implicit within the term. Thomas Jefferson’s nineteenth-century
vision of the average American as a free and independent farmer was no longer
valid in the twentieth century. People no longer believed that America was a
land of infinite possibilities, nor that hard work and determination was
sufficient to procure a successful life. The fundamental discrepancy between
the American Dream and the American reality was marked by the level of
5
The freedom of speech is guaranteed by the First Amendment to the US Constitution which
says: Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free
exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people
peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances (The
Constitution of the United States of America 1992:36).
6
The speech entitled “I have a Dream” was delivered by Martin Luther King, Jr. on the steps
of the Lincoln Memorial on August 23, 1963. The excerpts from the speech are taken from two
publications. The first one is ed. by Malkoc, Smolinski and Kral, Celebrate! Holidays in the U.S.A.
(1997:18). The second one is Black History Month [in:] ZOOM in on America, Vol. I, Issue 1
(February 2004:2).
7
“The Declaration of Independence” can be found in many publications. For students of
American culture I would recommend Jurczy ski’s (1995:346–348) Dictionary of the United
States.
182
poverty. The concept of the American Dream had been replaced by an idea of a
nightmare. 8
The American Dream can either materialise or evolve into a nightmare
depending upon the cultural prejudices of the local community and the
possibility of obtaining freedom. The phrase generally refers to the idea that
one’s prosperity depends upon one’s own abilities and hard work, not on a rigid
class structure. Some see the American Dream as an unfulfillable vision,
especially those whose race, ethnicity or gender the mainstream uses as an
excuse for excluding them from dreaming. Factors such as the exploitation of
immigrants, indifference to the poor, hostility towards workers’ organizations,
the subordination of women, discrimination and unequal opportunities all
provide barriers to one’s chance of attaining the American Dream. Individuals
who are united through some common bond, which may be religion, ethnicity or
social status, create a group or class of people. When individuals are subject to
racial prejudices this often makes upward mobility impossible. Without equal
opportunities to move upwards within society, the American Dream is
unattainable.
The antiquated ideology that determination and hard work help achieve the
American Dream has been replaced by the catchy idea “Get Rich! Quick!”
Americans are trying to get rich by winning millions from game shows, lotteries,
and frivolous lawsuits. Being wealthy, having lots of money, writing checks,
owning expensive and fast cars, multiple houses and estates, and dining at the
most beautiful 5 star restaurants in the city has become an obsession. Yet,
sometimes a new American Dream is looked at with less focus on financial gain
and more emphasis on living a simple, fulfilling life. In today’s society the
American Dream also means a myth that only leads to self-destruction. Having a
lot of money, a good job and expensive possessions are no way to guarantee
happiness.
The concept of the American Dream seems to have dwindled from its
position in the past few generations. It has veered away from success, freedom,
having lots of money and the nicest possessions. It is no longer just about money.
Better pay, a nice house, and a rising standard of living will always be attractive.
But another factor is emerging: The new American Dream is to maintain a
reasonable living standard while doing work that people enjoy. Nowadays the
American Dream could simply be labelled as „personal goal” or even a „life time
achievement”. Besides, it is no longer the American Dream but your own dream
and your own thoughts based on your standard of living.
The idea of the American Dream or the Promised Land has been widely
explored in films. Jim Jarmusch belongs to the group of independent directors
who have remained beyond the peripheries of North American mainstream
8
The change of meaning is discussed by Reuben, “PAL: Appendix S: The American Dream”.
183
culture. 9 This avant-garde director seeks to explore his country from the point of
view of an immigrant. 10
Permanent Vacation (1980) is an intimate study in the search for the
meaning in life. Suffering a bout of insomnia, sixteen year old drifter, Aloysious
(Chris Parker), wanders through downtown Manhattan in search of some kind of
cure for his loneliness. Allie rejects traditional social values, like materialism,
ambition and family. However, as the film unfolds, we see that Allie is interested
in the world around him but, rather than engaging with it via conventional
modes, he maintains an observational regard. Conventionally speaking, not much
happens in Permanent Vacation. Narrative events are accidental and random,
essentially forming a series of set pieces that trace a day in Allie’s life. The act of
walking through a strange and unfamiliar place is to be replayed constantly
throughout Jarmusch’s films. The simple action of walking establishes a
distinction between the individual and the world which surrounds them.
Almost every character Allie meets is “crazy” and every landscape he enters
strangely deserted, in ruins. The places which were supposed to be symbolic of
the American Dream look like the deserted villages of Eastern Europe. You know
it’s funny. You come to some place new and everything looks just the same – says
Eddie (Mazierska 1992:17). In this way Jarmusch wants to say that America is
not an exceptional place in the world, so the journey of migrants is senseless.
Jarmusch criticises America, its reigning ideologies and institutions by
portraying its landscape as a wasteland. However, it is precisely within these
deserted and run-down landscapes that he finds his alternative, bohemian
subjects – his glimpses of paradise.
Jarmusch’s Stranger than Paradise (1984) is an underground,
antimainstream film which is the first installment of a trilogy continuing with
Down by Law (1987) and Mystery Train (1989) that explores extensively the
themes of foreign perspectives of America, and the relationships that exist
between people and places. The first film plays with the dominant myths of
America as a promised land and reverses the stereotype of Eastern Europe as a
bleak land of misery and factory workers. Notably, it is a foreign character who
begins the narrative of exploring America and makes it also possible for the
culturally isolated immigrants in New York City. The characters lack any sort of
real ambition. Instead, the mundane and the everyday is emphasised and
explored, with often interesting results.
Jarmusch successfully documents the life and attitudes of a pair of bohemian
characters Willy (John Lurie) and Eddie (Richard Edson), the entrance of a new
element into their world, a younger woman from Hungary (Eva played by Ezster
9
More information concerning independent cinema in America is presented by Go!"biowski
(2004:428–429).
10
A detailed description of Jarmusch’s films is presented by Wi"cek (2001).
184
Balint), and finally their journey across the American landscape. This theme is
present in the rundown locale of New York and the monotonal quality of the
American landscape in general. The film includes three sections, each filmed in a
different part of the USA: The New World (filmed in New York), One Year Later
(in Cleveland) and Paradise (in Florida).
The movie opens with the arrival of Eva in New York City. She has come
from Budapest to live with her Aunt Lotte in Cleveland. She is supposed to stop
off at Willie's apartment in New York for ten days while the aunt has surgery. As
Eva walks along the streets on her way to Willie’s apartment, she plays a tape of
Screamin’ Jay Hawkins’ “I’ve Got a Spell On You.” This dangerous sounding
song from the 1950's probably conveys the sense of adventure Eva is hoping to
find in the United States. After finding Willie’s apartment Eva is stuck there for
the next ten days with nothing to do. Shot in black and white, with a stationary
camera, the scenes in the apartment look bleak and dismal. Willie and Eva spend
most of their days just watching television and smoking. Eva is bored, Willie is
content. She feels as if she is imprisoned. This is almost certainly not what Eva
expected when she decided to come to America.
The second section of the film titled One Year Later takes place in
Cleveland. It soon becomes apparent that Willie does not know how to have a
good time. The whole week he and Eddie spend in Cleveland is passed by
playing cards with Aunt Lotte and watching television. On the last day of their
visit they decide to visit Lake Erie. There Eddie expresses the fact that being in
Cleveland does not seem that different from being in New York and decides to
go to Florida. Willie holds a subconscious desire to change in his life, but does
not know how to go about doing this. Somehow he thinks that just by changing
his location he can bring about the change in his life. He does not realize that
change has to come from within.
The third section of the film is titled Paradise and the action takes place in
Florida. There the characters buy sunglasses to celebrate; another insignificant
and superficial change. Eva probably thinks that she is finally going to have
some fun but instead of going to the beach, Eddie and Willie go to the dog track.
Willie forbids Eva to go along and she is stuck in the motel room all day, feeling
once again bored and neglected. Jarmusch’s use of black and white photography
manages to make even Florida appear drab and dreary.
Down by Law (1986) continues Jarmusch’s fascination with people who live
on the margins of society. It shows further cluttered landscapes: shabby New
Orleans and mud-filled Louisiana. As a symbolic allegory, this film deals with
Death, Hell, and Redemption. The opening shot is of a hearse and cemetery. The
camera pans past the cemetery's memorials and mausoleums, and then past rows
of small shacks and houses that look similar to those structures that house the
dead in the previous shot. The setting is New Orleans, where people bury their
185
dead above the ground, and where two of the movie's characters seem to be
involved in the process of burying themselves in their squalid lives.
Two Americans, Zac (Tom Waits) and Jack (John Lurie), and an Italian, Bob
(Roberto Benigni), find themselves together in an enclosed space. Although the
space changes empirically - from prison cell to outdoor swamp - it essentially
remains the same. The film’s question is thus abstract: what happens when two
Americans and a foreigner are locked in a confined space? Jack talks about his
dreams of being a wealthy pimp on the outside, with beautiful women,
limousines, drugs, and the luxurious trappings of success. Zack and Jack are
each, seperately, entrapped and arrested due to their own greed and vanity.
Symbolically, the men who entrap them are manifestations of the devil, using
flattery and sweet words to seduce them into foolishly giving up their freedom.
For Zack and Jack, their arrests and imprisonment effectively equates to their
Death and descent into Hell. While not guilty of the crimes they were arrested
for, their lives were already condemned to a slow death. This film is more intent
on examining people who do not fit in and who are not interested in pursuing the
American Dream. They are foreigners, in a sense, in their own country.
Jarmusch continued his view of America through the eyes of outsiders with
the structurally ambitious Mystery Train (1989). The three stories that comprise
the film are all based on foreign characters moving through roughly the same
space; temporarily finding themselves in Memphis. Taking its title from one of
Elvis' own tunes, Mystery Train exemplifies director Jim Jarmusch's obsession
with American popular culture and music. Two young Japanese tourists in a
faded Amtrak coach are listening to their Walkmans. The girl is an Elvis fan. Her
boyfriend believes Carl Perkins 11 was the true father of rock 'n' roll. They have
come to visit the shrines of Memphis – including the Sun recording studios,
where rock 'n' roll was born.
It is not until the final episode (Lost in Space) that Jarmusch explores the
perspective of black America. The hidden imperialism of the mythical South and
the way it wrote black musicians out of its history is implied in the scene where Joe
questions his black friend, Will Robinson (Rick Aviles), about why the Arcade
motel is filled with pictures of Elvis Presley but not Martin Luther King or Carl
Perkins, especially because it is located in a black neighbourhood and run by black
men. Will responds sardonically: It’s because white people own the motel.
The picture of the city presented in the film is rather a sad one: we see a
waste disposal site, a motorway exit, all in all a quite depressing cityscape. The
movie does not show much of the architecture of Memphis, the audience only
sees one or two roads, an old hotel, a barber-shop, a pub called The Shades and
various pictures of the King. The titles of the three episodes also indicate a kind
11
Carl Perkins – an American pioneer of rockabilly music, a mix of rhythm, blues and
country music, recorded most notably at Sun Records in Memphis.
186
of absence - the central topic of the film: Far from Yokohama implies that
Memphis is not seen as a city in its own right, but as not being Yokohama.
During the episode A Ghost the centre of attention literally shifts to the King's
ghost, rather than the reality of Elvis. Lost in Space is about the character’s
alienation. The pattern connecting the episodes also functions as a sequential
structure of the night: namely the noise of the passing night-train, a voice on the
radio introducing Blue Moon by Elvis, and the sound of a shot in the morning.
Further links that work as points of reference between the episodes are
everybody’s complaining because of the absence of a TV-set, and the everpresent portraits of Elvis, taking over the function of a hotel bible. The
soundtrack is taken from a local radio station, and Presley’s version of Blue
Moon is heard at one time or another during all three of these stories, providing a
common link. The ghost of Elvis, who seems to haunt the movie with his voice
and his legend, acts in a similar vein. But this is not the Elvis of the supermarket
tabloids, just as Mystery Train is not about dusty Amtrak coaches. The movie is
about legends, and people who believe in them.
As illustrated in numerous movies, the idea of the American Dream is
becoming a myth, a thing from the past, once pursued but no longer attainable.
The realities show that there are enormous differences in the economic status of
American citizens. Some of them have set their expectations so high that it has
become too difficult to achieve, which causes many to give up on the American
Dream. Depending on what your definition of the American Dream is, it is up to
you to reach the goals you set. Although there is a widening gap between the rich
and the poor, there is still a chance to bridge that gap. Efforts to extend rights to
previously excluded groups have been accompanied by a continuing expansion
of educational opportunities. Today, numerous earlier generations of immigrants
have achieved levels of success that often surpass those of native-born
Americans. If children once living in slums can become lawyers or doctors, if an
immigrant can become California’s governor, if ordinary people can become
extraordinary people, then the American Dream remains quite possible.
References
Primary Sources
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States. Warszawa: Wydawnictwa Szkolne i Pedagogiczne, pp. 346–348.
The Constitution of the United States of America. 1992. Warszawa: Beartig.
Books
Adams, J.T. 1931. The Epic of America. New York: Blue Ribbon Books.
Crèvecoeur, J. 1997. Letters from an American Farmer. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Fitzgerald, F.S. 1999. The Great Gatsby. New York: Columbia University Press.
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Go !biowski, M. 2004. Dzieje kultury Stanów Zjednoczonych. Warszawa: Wydawnictwo Naukowe
PWN.
G.A. Kleparski and A. Uberman (eds). 2008. Galicia Studies in English. Che!m: Tawa.
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Whitman, W. 1973. Leaves of Grass. New York: W. W. Norton & Company.
Wi!cek, E. 2001. Mniej ucz szczane !cie"ki do raju. O filmach Jima Jarmuscha. Kraków: Rabid.
Articles
Billingsley, K.L. 1995. ‘Is California Still the American Dream?’ [in:] American Studies
Newsletter, September, pp. 7–12.
David, L. and I. David. 1991. ‘America’s National Symbols’ [in:] American Studies Newsletter,
September, pp. 29–33.
Mazierska, E. 1992. ‘Wsz"dzie jest tak samo’ [in:] Kino, March, p. 17.
Internet Sources
Reuben, P.P. ‘PAL: Appendix S: The American Dream’ [in:] PAL: Perspectives in American
Literature – A Research and Reference Guide.
<http://www.csustan.edu/english/reuben/pal/append/axs.html>.
‘Black History Month’ [in:] ZOOM in on America - A Monthly Publication of the USA Mission to
Poland. Warsaw: American Information Resource Center, February 2004, Vol. I, Issue 1.
www.usinfo.pl/zoom/.
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REVIEWS
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